MBNA America Credit Cards Ripoff! claims sent notification of credit card's fixed rate now becoming variable, MAJOR SCAM... Wilmington Delaware

IT ALL BEGAN Spring 2004. We (my husband and myself), receive a credit card offer/junk mail. As I always do with the other fifteen I receive each week, I opened it so that I could shred any documents inside that had any trace of our names/address on them.

Well! This particular MBNA America Platinum Plus offer ended up catching my eye. It stated we could have a FIXED rate of 5.9% for the life of the payoff on any balance transfers if we applied for a card with them. And as long as we did not default in any way (ie: over-the-limit, missed/late payment, not paying at least minimum payments, etc).

Sounds Good! Especially since I have a card with a $5,000 balance that I am currently paying 9.99% on. BUT WAIT! ALways a skeptic, I pour over this offer for a week and make my husband do the same. Then we call cust svc and throw out any questions we can think of and re-iterate this GOOD DEAL. Turns out- it really is a good deal for us! And I figure, it's a nice deal and we probably have been approved for this due to our nice, shiny credit.

Well, the deal's been made! We did it- transferred a $5,000 balance from our other credit card. And ALL has been well. We have for a year now, made on-time payments 100% of the time and we always pay the minimum plus whatever else we can afford to add on that particular month.

I just received our March 2005 statement today and with no explanation our interest rate this month on our balance transfer (and everything else) has gone from 5.9% last month to 17.49% this month!!! HUH?? Okay, calm down, there must be a mistake or some snafu.

Called customer service just now, and NOPE! No mistake here! What did we do to deserve this???? I confirmed that we do always pay by the due date and always the minimum payment, plus between 20-40% more. Customer Service says, "Yes, that's all true." Apparantly, MBNA AMERICA is not making enough dough off the likes of us, and simply decided"changed their credit card terms" effective March 2005. They can legally do this.

Customer Service explained MBNA AMERICA sent out a notice in the mail to all Platinum Plus card holders during December 2004. Ok, well that good and fine and all, but I never saw it! It's possible by human error of many facets here, that NO, WE DID NOT RECEIVE IT. (And we really didn't!)

So, I don't know a ton about financial services, percentage rates, the market, etc BUT I do always read the fine print and ask lots of questions and am generally considered a smart girl for my age. I tell MBNA AMERICA cust svc that I know that we, as cardholders, have a legal right to refuse any changes in terms--- at which point a variety of things go on...

"Refusal of new terms" allows you to payoff the remaining balance at your old agreed upon rate (mine = 5.9%) BUT you no longer are allowed to use the card in any way nor do you any longer have a line of credit with this company on that card. We don't make purchases on it anyhow so no big deal to us-

So we tell cust svc that we refuse the new terms. Seems simple. Please close our account and line of credit, we refuse the terms and would just like to payoff the balance at the 5.9%. Oooooh...sooo sorrrryyyyyy... we would have had to make that decision by March 9, 2005 (3 weeks ago).

But we didn't receive any notification and the billing statements that fall under this new agreement just took effect 3/23/05. And we received that statement today. So, I ask cust svc- that's it???? We're just screwed????? We didn't know about it, so couldn't refuse it by March 9th and you cannot retro-active refuse this offer for us?????? NOPE. THE END.

I'm totally thinking class action lawsuit will be brought upon this company. I'm sure there's some sicko legal loophole which allows this to occur but it is horrifying, immoral, and at the very LEAST- IT IS VERY VERY POOR BUSINESS.

The world just is not cut out a little young married couple with a baby, trying to make an honest living and get ahead. I don't think we ever will. Not with corporate scams like this being legal. I have had 2 Platinum Accounts with Citibank for almost 10 years and have never ever had an issue that was unresolvable, unexplainable, unjustified, etc. NEVER.

We still get tons and tons of junk mail offers from MBNA, you probably do too! Please don't fall for this, like we did!!! (Incidently, the huge increase in the rate since last month also increased our minimum monthly payment exactly 125%)

Jess
Metro Detroit, Michigan
U.S.A.

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